Test Your Musical Talent

I'm not affiliated with this outfit nor do I know anyone there. I just thought their little test of one's ability to detect pitch was interesting and not ridiculously easy. (BTW, it loads quickly from their site...at least, for me. Just click the "Start Ear Test") www.earpower.com/etest.htm

The question being - Do you think a good ear only stays that way through practice, like grabbing lines from recorded music?

I was wondering about the "lazy" factor you mentioned. I have to cop lines from music I hear all the time since I play clubs most often. Often, I set aside a certain amount of time to learn something that I think will be too difficult to learn quickly with my phrase trainer. Then I find I have almost all the allotted time left over because everything just fell into place. (Not bragging by any means; 20+ years ago, I often found my lines weren't very true to the originals sometimes).

I do think a good ear requires constant maintenance. I know since I've started playing fretless again hearing pitch and intonation have become a lot more acute for me.

I played fretless exclusively during the mid-nineties but ended up joining a band where I did a lot of lead vocals and found playing fretless and singing to be too demanding so I switched back to fretted. I joined another band not too long ago where I didn't sing nearly as much so I decided to buy a fretless to add to my arsenal. I've been using it almost exclusively but the hearing part was almost like starting over.

Also, when I first started playing bass (and guitar) I spent a lot of time learning songs from recordings. Anytime I got away from doing that I would go through a short interval where I felt like I was 'tuning my ear' up.

If you scroll down the front page looking at the columns on the right you'll find a section called "hot Tools".

Go in there and they have a couple of ear-training exercises in a bit called 'The Ear Training Machine' - it starts you off with a C tone and then plays a second tone - you have to work out what the 2nd tone is.

I see you have/had a teacher, too. Perhaps, you had exposure when you were young, as I did.

I read an article about a study by some pediatrics organization which concluded that the older we get without involvement in music, the more tone deaf we become. It said we are born with perfect pitch, because it is a survival mechanism that enables us to learn speech and it's dynamics. But as we grow older, this natural skill or "instinct" naturally deteriorates because it no longer is needed for survival, unless one is involved in music or something else where tone/pitch is valuable.

Originally posted by The Mock Turtle Regulator
is there a similar test for intervals anywhere?

Click to expand...

Here is a really good one: http://www.synchron.de/EARTRAINER/
It has intervals, and chords. It will play a random interval or chord and you have to guess what it is. Has different difficulty levels you can choose. You have to sign up with a username and password, but it's free and only takes a minute. (also, requires windows media player)